Roy Exum: 'Legion' Smears Barrett

  • Sunday, September 27, 2020
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

It’s a given that our America has turned cold, eager to criticize, demean and detest. President Donald Trump is eagerly met at every corner by “The Legion of Miserable,” the nay-sayers, the haters, and those who relish in others’ failures, all while ignoring the glare of their own misgivings. The acid-filled Liberals blame him for everything. An example? It is his fault over $2 billion of riot damages were thrust upon the United States by our Democrat-controlled major cities and the fact over 200,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus is all because of the way he combs his hair.

Now he wants to name a Catholic to the Supreme Court, a woman who has given birth to a son with Down Syndrome! What’s more, Amy Coney Barrett, and her husband – some lawyer named Jesse who she fell for at Notre Dame’s law school – have adopted two children from strife-torn Haiti.

They have seven children total, this an affront to “Planned Parenthood” and other leftist groups.

One of the Haitian adoptees, to the Legion’s unmitigated disgust, weighed only 11 pounds at age 14 months when she was flown to the United States and the Barretts were told the child might never walk, or talk, but they brought the kid with little chance into our country “anyway.”

Again, the “legion’s view” is that Donald Trump is disgusting and now, with 36 days before 77-year-old Joe Biden will assuredly decimate the arrogant puff-adder in the November election (in the Democrats’ belief), Trump further wants to ruin the Supreme Court with a female who is a Catholic!

God forbid the above paragraphs will ever be taken out of context (and attributed to me!) but that is all the twisted liberal media has spewed leading up to the President’s official nomination yesterday afternoon. If the naysayers are going to quote me on Amy Coney Barrett, use this one: “I believe Judge Barrett has no equal in becoming our newest justice.

“I also believe, firmly, that Amy Barrett, as a devout Catholic, a Godly mother blessed with seven children, a “girl” who was No. 1 in her class at Notre Dame Law, and “handpicked” by Jesus to warrant His blessing of a Down Syndrome son, that she is without peer to help lead and guide our country back to its values, its character, and its promise from this day forward.”

So, help me, I am excited for her. The “Legion” points with great glee to her church’s stance on abortion, on Roe vs. Wade, but Judge Barrett has left no doubt of prejudice in any of her legal decisions. It has been clear time and again that her personal views have no bearing whatsoever on the myriad of laws set forth and deeply based on the U.S. Constitution. Please, she clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia and as a conservative, her opinions carry considerable weight.

A native of New Orleans, where she grew up in a family of seven in in the suburbs of Metairie, she attended Rhodes College in Memphis and then spent two years as a judicial law clerk, first for Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1997 to 1998, then for Justice Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1998 to 1999.

According to Wikipedia. President Donald Trump nominated Barrett on May 8, 2017, to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and following her confirmation, she was selected by Trump 11 months later to replace the recently deceased Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court.

The Legion of the Miserable’s assault was in full swing when President Trump made his recommendation late yesterday afternoon in The Rose Garden at the White House. “She is a woman of unparalleled achievement, towering intellect, sterling credentials and unyielding loyalty to the Constitution - Judge Amy Coney Barrett,” said the President.

* * *

WASHINGTON POST WRITER CLAIMS BARRETT IS “A DANGEROUS RADICAL"

This from PJ Media: On Sunday, The Washington Post book critic Ron Charles suggested Barrett’s religious faith makes her a dangerous radical. “Amy Coney Barrett, the judge at the top of Trump’s list to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has said we should always remember that a ‘legal career is but a means to an end … and that end is building the Kingdom of God,'” Charles tweeted.

Charles and a few others appeared to seize on the “Kingdom of God” phrase as if it were a dog-whistle for a radical and nefarious agenda.

“Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s top pick, believes a ‘legal career is but a means to an end…and that end is building the Kingdom of God.’ I’m a Christian but this is terrifying RT (Tweeter slang for ‘real talk’) if you care about the separation of church and state,” tweeted Lindy Li, a Joe Biden delegate to the Democratic National Convention and a former Princeton University class president.

Yet many conservatives — and even some pro-Biden political observers — rightly castigated Charles and others for attacking Barrett’s faith. Barrett, who taught at Notre Dame Law School for 15 years and who is a practicing Roman Catholic, was merely using a common term in Jewish and Christian circles, meant to reference doing justice and following God’s will in her work.

“I hate to break it to you, Ron, but all believing Jews and Christians think that our purpose is to build the kingdom of God,” Yoram Hazony, an Orthodox Jew and president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, tweeted in response to Charles.

On Friday, after news outlets reported that Trump would choose Barrett, HBO host Bill Maher savaged the potential nominee for her Roman Catholic faith. Yet perhaps no one has given a better response to such anti-religious bigotry than Barrett herself.

“Apparently, the pick is going to be Amy Coney. We’re going to be saying the name a lot because she’s a (expletive) nut. Religion, I was right about that one, too,” Maher said.

“Amy Coney Barrett. Catholic. Really Catholic. I mean really, really Catholic, like speaking in tongues. She doesn’t believe in condoms, which she has in common with Trump, because he doesn’t either. We learned that from Stormy Daniels,” Maher quipped.

Maher’s objection to Barrett appears to be grounded in the idea that charismatic Roman Catholics are some dangerous anti-science sect and so they cannot treat legal issues dispassionately. Rather than just attack Catholicism, he attacked the broader Christian trend of believing that people still speak in tongues due to the Holy Spirit (a controversial position in Christianity, but one that extends to a broad swath of Christians). He even suggested that Barrett could not be trusted because of “religion.”

Yet Barrett is an originalist, stated the PJ Media Report. This means she aims to uphold the original public meaning of the Constitution, rather than reinterpreting it in order to unilaterally amend the Constitution, writing her policy preferences in law as the Supreme Court did in Roe v. Wade (1973), creating a new “right” to abortion.

During Barrett’s confirmation hearing for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) notoriously imposed something of a religious test. “The dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein said, suggesting that Barrett’s religious convictions disqualified her from service on the federal bench.

* * *

JUDGE BARRETT’S RESPONSE TO SUCH RELIGIOUS ATTACKS

Again, this from a PJ Media report:

Last year at an event with Hillsdale College, Barrett’s student Stephanie Maloney asked the judge “What role, if any, should faith of a nominee have in the confirmation process?”

Barrett said, “None.”

She then explained: “I mean, we have a long tradition of religious tolerance in this country. And in fact, the religious test clause in the Constitution makes it unconstitutional to impose a religious test on anyone who holds public office,” the judge explained.

“So, whether someone is Catholic or Jewish or Evangelical or Muslim or has no faith at all is irrelevant to the job,” Barrett added.

“I do have one thing that I want to add to that, though. I think when you step back and you think about the debate about whether someone’s religion has any bearing on their fitness for office, it seems to me that the premise of the question is that people of faith would have a uniquely difficult time separating out their moral commitments from their obligation to apply the law. And I think people of faith should reject that premise,” she added.

“All people, of course– well, we hope, most people– have deeply held moral convictions, whether or not they come from faith. People who have no faith, people who are not religious, have deeply held moral convictions,” Barrett noted. “And it’s just as important for those people to be sure– I just spent time talking about the job of a judge being to set aside moral convictions, personal moral convictions, and personal preferences, and follow the law. That’s a challenge for those of faith and for those who have no faith.”

“So I think the public should be absolutely concerned about whether a nominee for judicial office will be willing and able to set aside personal preferences, be they moral, be they political, whatever convictions they are,” Barrett explained. “The public should be concerned about whether a nominee can set those aside in favor of following the law.”

“But that’s not a challenge just for religious people. I mean, that’s a challenge for everyone. And so, I think it’s a dangerous road to go down to say that only religious people would not be able to separate out moral convictions from their duty,” she said.

* * *

AMY CONEY BARRETT INTRODUCES HER CHILDREN

In an article that appeared in Newsweek, it was noted she has shielded her seven children somewhat but during confirmation hearings in 2017, which led to her appointment as a judge for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals based in Chicago, she described her husband Jesse, a Federal prosecutor in the northern district of Indiana, and their family (they live in South Bend, Indiana, where Notre Dame is located … did you know Notre Dame is neither a university nor a college … it is simply “Notre Dame.”)

The Newsweek article stated: “Jesse and Amy have seven children: five biological and two adopted. One of the few times she's spoken publicly about her family is during her 2017 confirmation hearing.

At the time, her three oldest daughters, her parents Mike and Linda Coney of New Orleans, and her husband appeared with her at a press conference:

"Emma is 16. The first apple of our eye," Amy said during the 2017 hearing. "Vivian, directly next to Emma, is 13. Vivian is our miracle. Vivian joined our family - she was born in Haiti and she came home when she was 14 months old, and she weighed 11 pounds and she was so weak we were told she might never walk normally or speak.

“Today Vivian is a track star, and I assure you she has no trouble talking! Tess, sitting next to Vivian, is also 13 years old. Both in 8th grade. She's one of the most compassionate and determined people that I know."

While Emma, Vivian and Tess appeared with their mom at the hearing, her four other children remained home, "with friends and fearless babysitters," Barrett said.

"John Peter is 10, and like Vivian, he was born in Haiti. He joined our family in 2010 when he was 3 years old after the devastating earthquake in Haiti," she said.

"Liam is 8. Typically curious 8-year-old. And Juliet is our spunky 6-year-old. Benjamin, our youngest, is 5, and Benjamin has special needs (Down Syndrome), and that presents unique challenges for all of us. But I think all you need to know about Benjamin's place in the family is summed up by the fact the other children unreservedly identify him as their favorite sibling."

* * *

Believe this: I am swept away by the person we discover in Amy Coney Barrett and, no matter what garbage the Legion of the Miserable can create in the coming weeks, Judge Barrett’s confirmation gives me added hope for America’s tomorrows.

royexum@aol.com

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